o act on the
mind as the luminous source of all these diverging lights. But the
magical whole is not yet completed; the mystery of color has been
called in to the aid of light, and so subtly blends that we can hardly
separate them; at least, until their united effect has first been
felt, and after we have begun the process of cold analysis. Yet even
then we cannot long proceed before we find the charm returning; as we
pass from the blaze of light on the carcass, where all the tints of
the prism seem to be faintly subdued, we are met on its borders by the
dark harslet, glowing like rubies; then we repose awhile on the white
cap and kerchief of the nursing mother; then we are roused again by
the flickering strife of the antagonist colors on a blue jacket and
red petticoat; then the strife is softened by the low yellow of a
straw-bottomed chair; and thus with alternating excitement and repose
do we travel through the picture, till the scientific explorer loses
the analyst in the unresisting passiveness of a poetic dream. Now
all this will no doubt appear to many, if not absurd, at least
exaggerated: but not so to those who have ever felt the sorcery of
color. They, we are sure, will be the last to question the character
of the feeling because of the ingredients which worked the spell,
and, if true to themselves, they must call it poetry. Nor will they
consider it any disparagement to the all-accomplished Raffaelle to say
of Ostade that he also was an Artist.

We turn now to a work of the great Italian,--the Death of Ananias.
The scene is laid in a plain apartment, which is wholly devoid of
ornament, as became the hall of audience of the primitive Christians.
The Apostles (then eleven in number) have assembled to transact the
temporal business of the Church, and are standing together on a
slightly elevated platform, about which, in various attitudes, some
standing, others kneeling, is gathered a promiscuous assemblage of
their new converts, male and female. This quiet assembly (for we still
feel its quietness in the midst of the awful judgment) is suddenly
roused by the sudden fall of one of their brethren; some of them turn
and see him struggling in the agonies of death. A moment before he was
in the vigor of life,--as his muscular limbs still bear evidence;
but he had uttered a falsehood, and an instant after his frame is
convulsed from head to foot. Nor do we doubt for a moment as to the
awful cause: it is almost expres